News tagged with laser light

German physicists create a 'super-photon'

Physicists from the University of Bonn have developed a completely new source of light, a so-called Bose-Einstein condensate consisting of photons. Until recently, expert had thought this impossible. This ...

Physics / General Physics

created Nov 24, 2010 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (69) | comments 36 | with audio podcast

Rotating Space Elevator Propels its Own Load

(PhysOrg.com) -- The idea of the space elevator just got a little crazier. While the “traditional” concept involved using rocket propulsion or laser light pressure to propel loads up a cable anchored to Earth, ...

Physics / General Physics

created May 21, 2009 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (47) | comments 33 feature

Pair of aluminum atomic clocks reveal Einstein's relativity at a personal scale

Scientists have known for decades that time passes faster at higher elevations—a curious aspect of Einstein's theories of relativity that previously has been measured by comparing clocks on the earth's surface ...

Physics / General Physics

created Sep 23, 2010 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (45) | comments 50 | with audio podcast

Scientists build world's first anti-laser

More than 50 years after the invention of the laser, scientists at Yale University have built the world's first anti-laser, in which incoming beams of light interfere with one another in such a way as to perfectly ...

Physics / General Physics

created Feb 17, 2011 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (44) | comments 18 | with audio podcast

Tying light in knots

(PhysOrg.com) -- The remarkable feat of tying light in knots has been achieved by a team of physicists working at the universities of Bristol, Glasgow and Southampton, UK, reports a paper in Nature Physics this w ...

Physics / General Physics

created Jan 17, 2010 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (38) | comments 4 | with audio podcast

New nanocrystals show potential for cheap lasers, new lighting

For more than a decade, scientists have been frustrated in their attempts to create continuously emitting light sources from individual molecules because of an optical quirk called "blinking," but now scientists ...

Nanotechnology / Nanophysics

created May 10, 2009 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (29) | comments 4

First atomic X-ray laser created

Scientists working at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have created the shortest, purest X-ray laser pulses ever achieved, fulfilling a 45-year-old prediction and ...

Physics / General Physics

created Jan 25, 2012 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (29) | comments 14 | with audio podcast

City lights could reveal E.T. civilization

In the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, astronomers have hunted for radio signals and ultra-short laser pulses. In a new paper, Avi Loeb (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and Edwin Turner ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Nov 03, 2011 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (29) | comments 54 | with audio podcast

Delayed time zero in photoemission: New record in time measurement accuracy

German physicists have discovered a time delay when using light pulses to emit electrons from atoms. Until now, it has been assumed that the electrons start moving out of the atom immediately after the impact ...

Physics / General Physics

created Jun 24, 2010 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (26) | comments 27 | with audio podcast

Engineers grow nanolasers on silicon, pave way for on-chip photonics

Engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, have found a way to grow nanolasers directly onto a silicon surface, an achievement that could lead to a new class of faster, more efficient microprocessors, ...

Physics / Optics & Photonics

created Feb 06, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (25) | comments 14 | with audio podcast

Scientists create metal that pumps liquid uphill

(PhysOrg.com) -- In nature, trees pull vast amounts of water from their roots up to their leaves hundreds of feet above the ground through capillary action, but now scientists at the University of Rochester ...

Physics / General Physics

created Jun 02, 2009 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (27) | comments 22

Light touch transforms material into a superconductor

(PhysOrg.com) -- A non-superconducting material has been transformed into a superconductor using light, Oxford University researchers report.

Physics / Superconductivity

created Jan 14, 2011 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (25) | comments 9 | with audio podcast

The world's smallest microlaser

ETH-Zurich physicists (Switzerland) have developed a new kind of laser that shatters the boundaries of possibility: it is by far the smallest electrically pumped laser in the world and one day could revolutionize ...

Physics / General Physics

created Mar 23, 2010 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (26) | comments 5 | with audio podcast

Nano-sized light mill drives micro-sized disk (w/ Video)

While those wonderful light sabers in the Star Wars films remain the figment of George Lucas' fertile imagination, light mills - rotary motors driven by light - that can power objects thousands of times greater ...

Physics / General Physics

created Jul 05, 2010 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (25) | comments 8 | with audio podcast

First, fast, and faster

(Phys.org) -- Scientists in PML's Quantum Measurement Division have produced the first superluminal light pulses made by using a technique called four-wave mixing, creating two separate pulses whose peaks ...

Physics / Optics & Photonics

created Apr 06, 2012 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (25) | comments 33 | with audio podcast

Laser

A laser is a device that emits light (electromagnetic radiation) through a process called stimulated emission. The term laser is an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. Laser light is usually spatially coherent, which means that the light either is emitted in a narrow, low-divergence beam, or can be converted into one with the help of optical components such as lenses. Typically, lasers are thought of as emitting light with a narrow wavelength spectrum ("monochromatic" light). This is not true of all lasers, however: some emit light with a broad spectrum, while others emit light at multiple distinct wavelengths simultaneously. The coherence of typical laser emission is distinctive. Most other light sources emit incoherent light, which has a phase that varies randomly with time and position.

For more information about Laser, read the full article at Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Related topics: light , laser , electrons , molecules , atoms